


like wildflowers

by magicandlight



Series: The States [15]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-13 02:40:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15354411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: Love is like wildflowers; It's often found in the most unlikely places. -Ralph Waldo Emerson





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the re-written and hopefully better NYPA story arc

**March 3, 1858**  
Will puts off the recall as long as possible.

He's sort of glad the house is in Philadelphia, but he'd rather not be crammed into a house with all of his siblings. There was a reason they lived in their own states.

But recalls are a matter of loyalty, and typically, there's a good reason for it.

This time, Will would assume that it was the war they could feel looming.

Eventually, he has to pack.   
\--------  
The Philadelphia house is chaos.

Ginny's familiar Strawberry is snarling at Genevieve, who's curled up in Evangeline's arms as a hissing bobcat. Boxes of various essentials are everywhere as Alfred and Sera attempt to put them in their places. ("Why is the box of dishes upstairs?!" Sera calls down at one point.)

Austin and Theo have already fought at least once today, though Addison drifts between them cheerfully as usual. Cait bounces around with her usual enthusiasm. The Carolinas look around like they're already planning their next prank, which would have been concerning even without Scarlett rounding them out between them.

Will finds Del, the only spot of calm. Blue is sitting at his sister's feet, and she nudges against him when he comes over.

Will smiles and scratches behind Blue's ears.

Del stands to hug him, and it hits how long it's been since he last saw his sister. She's grown a little- likely the same growth spurt they'd all gotten, and her cheeks have finally lost the little bit of baby fat they'd retained throughout the wars.

"I missed you," He tells her.

Del rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "I missed you too. Better go pick a room before all the good ones get taken."   
\--------  
Will dumps his stuff into the room next to Del's, and then goes back downstairs to figure out the food situation.

Or, that was the plan until something ran into him on the staircase, knocking him into someone and knocking them both down to the landing.

A dog barks, then whines.

"... _Ouch_. Roscoe, knock it off.  _Rustig_."

It's similar enough to the German word that Will understands that it means quiet, but that could be assumed by the way the dog immediately goes silent.

Will looks towards the other state to apologize.

The words die in his throat.

The dog from earlier- Roscoe- is licking it's owner's face, obviously making sure she's okay.

Brooke's nose scrunches as Roscoe licks her and she pushes his face away. "Ros, stop that."

She looks over at him. "Sorry about that. Roscoe gets a little too excited. You're okay?"

Will stands, and offers Brooke a hand. "Yeah."

His eyes flicker over her form before he forces his eyes to her face. 

 **April 7, 1858**  
Will doesn't bother trying to pretend that he isn't into her, which is interesting.

Brooke would have thought he would at least try to- there was a century of animosity behind them before the unsteady, wordless truce that had come around the time Abby had renamed herself Sera.

But Will's attention lingers on her legs long enough for her to notice, and he meets her gaze without a single ounce of shame. 

 **May 19, 1858**  
The first time they almost-kiss, it is dawn, he got a little too close, Brooke moved a little too fast, and they both nearly fell.

Brooke's back is pressed to the pantry shelving, Will's hands are braced on either side of her head, and their mouths are only about three inches away.

Will's eyes flicker towards her mouth, and Brooke tilts her head slightly upwards.

His eyes meet hers again before he starts to lean in.

A metal pan falls off the shelf Brooke is leaning against, startling them both.

The moment is gone. Brooke sighs internally and leaves. 

 **August 23, 1858**  
"Come on, Roscoe." Brooke says, jangling the leash. "Let's go for a walk."

Roscoe pulls his head from the hole he'd dug under the bushes and barks, bounding over happily.

She clips the leash to Roscoe's collar.  
\-------  
Roscoe is a one hundred and seventy pound Great Dane and he  _pulls_.

Usually not enough to make her fall, but enough to make her walk faster.

Will is sitting on the porch steps when they get back.

Roscoe barks, and  _yanks_.

Hard enough he pulls his leash from her hand.  
\--------  
This is the second almost-kiss, Brooke holding Roscoe's collar, Will with messy hair and a rumpled shirt, hand brushing back a strand of her hair.

Then Blue- Del's golden retriever- trots out, barking at Roscoe.

Will glares at Blue for a solid ten minutes.

 **November 4, 1858**  
The first thing Will hears is the quiet bickering coming from the living room.

"Austin, you know why we broke up. We were at each other's throats all the time."

"Not most the time."

"Austin-"

"We were  _happy_. You were happy. You can't fake that kind of happiness, Brooke."

There's a sigh. "Austin, we can't go back."

Will steps away. This isn't for him to hear.

 **February 1, 1859**  
Adrien comes to visit and Will watches as Brooke flies down the stairs and into his arms.

Adrien laughs at something she says to him, but Will's eyes are locked on the way Brooke's arms are thrown around Adrien's neck, and how Adrien had hugged her, his arms tight around her waist.

 **February 4, 1859**  
Scott shoves Emily into his arms. "Here, hold her."

"What-?"

Scott's already gone. Will looks down at the toddler.

Who immediately starts wailing.   
\------  
Adrien stumbles into the dining room, takes one look at Will frantically trying to soothe Emily, who's wailing in his arms at the moment, and laughs.

"Oh, you're  _really_  bad with kids."

Will shoves Emily towards Adrien. "Make her  _stop_   _crying_."

"Ha, uh, no."

Will gives him a look, and Adrien must take pity.

"Brooke is good with kids."  
\-------  
Brooke holds her hands out for the baby as soon as he bursts in her room.

As soon as she takes the baby, Emily stops crying.

She cradles Emily in her arms, singing to her in Spanish.

Will stares as Emily closes her eyes and goes to sleep.

She glances down at the sleeping child. "I used to work at an orphanage, you know." Brooke looks at him and  _smiles_.

It's soft and gentle and  _beautiful_.

This is the third almost-kiss, Brooke looking up at him with that smile, Will looking down at her  _amazed_.

Will cups her face and leans closer. Brooke's eyes flutter shut-

The door slams open and they startle apart. Emily wakes up and begins wailing again.

"I can take Emily back now." Scott says. Brooke holds her out, and Scott takes her, whispering Spanish.

Will takes a breath. "Are you and Adrien together?"

Brooke blinks. Laughs. "Um, what?"

Will shifts uncomfortably. "You're sort of all over each other and he sleeps in here sometimes and he calls you  _chou_  and everyone thinks you're going to end up together."

Brooke looks at him, lips curving into a smile. "Are you  _jealous_?"

Will can feel his face starting to burn. " _No!_  Just... curious."

Brooke raises her eyebrows. "Really?"

Will nods.

Brooke rolls her eyes, but the gesture seems almost fond. "We aren't together. We won't ever have any relationship except friends. Adrien calls me chou because he knows it annoys me. He sleeps in here sometimes because I don't sleep full nights often anyway and Nicky kicks." She pauses, tapping her fingers against her thigh. "We've slept together before, but not for a while now."

Will wants to know more, but then Brooke really will think that he's jealous. He nods, backing towards the door. "Bye, Brooke."

"Goodbye, Will."

 **March 9, 1859**  
Adrien and Nicky are sprawled out on the carpet in the middle of the library, talking about Brooke.

Will decides to check that the shelves are properly organized. It definitely has nothing to do with Adrien and Nicky's discussion.

"Brooke's in one of her moods again."

Adrien hums thoughtfully. "Which one is it this time?"

"Luce, I think. She isn't wearing the necklace and she's painting more."  
\--------  
Brooke is surprisingly hard to track down, but eventually, he finds her holed up in the attic.

She's made herself a nest of blankets and pillows by the window, a small stack of books near beside it, candles placed strategically around her so she wouldn't have to go far to put them out or risk knocking them over.

"So this is where the books keep going."

Brooke doesn't look surprised to see him, and doesn't react to his sudden words aside from flipping the page.

Her hands are covered in various shades of green paint, a splash of blue above her eyebrow. So Nicky was right about the painting. Usually, Brooke stuck to mediums that could be contained in her sketchbooks.

Will looked over her stack of books, noting two novels in French, and a novel by an author he's never heard of.

"Are these the ones you've already read or the ones you're going to read next?"

"I've already read them."

Will gestures with the one in English. "Any good?"

Brooke frowns, her nose scrunching up. "It's alright. Not my style."

He wonders what exactly is Brooke's style. "The French ones?"

Brooke looks away from her book. "You don't read French."

Will shrugs. "If they're good, someone will translate them eventually."

Brooke laughs, setting her book away and turning to face him. That one's in French too.

She takes one of the books from him, glancing at the title. "This one is  _le meneur de loups_. That translates to the leader of wolves or the Wolf Leader. It's about werewolves. It's weird." Brooke taps the other one. "This one is  _Histoire d'un casse-noisette._ The Nutcracker. It's a fantasy book or something. Anna would probably like it."

She reaches for the book she had been reading. "This one is  _Le Comte de Monte-Cristo_ , or the Count of Monte Cristo. It's all about revenge and scheming and it's _amazing_. If any of these were to get translated, it would be this one." Brooke bites her lip, the first gesture of uncertainty he's seen from her in the whole time they'd been recalled.

It's endearing.

"I could read it to you sometime, if you wanted. In English. I could translate it." She clarifies at his baffled look.

Will raises an eyebrow. "You could translate an entire novel as you read it?"

Brooke shrugs.

Will smiles. "I'd like that." Then he remembers why he was looking for Brooke in the first place.

"Who's Luce?"

Brooke goes tense. "What?"

"Adrien and Nicky were talking and brought her up."

Brooke glances down at her paint covered hands. "Luce... Luce was my lover. It didn't end well."

That was unexpected. Will had known there had been something that had gone on with Philip, and some of the states thought she'd slept with Hamilton.

There had never been anything about Brooke and a woman.

 _Oh fuck_ , it had been a  _woman_. There were rumors about Callie and Brooke and what if that was why she broke up with Austin-

"Are you gay?"

Brooke stares blankly at him for a moment. "What?"

"Are you-"

"I heard you, I just-  _what_?" Brooke shakes her head to clear her thoughts. "I'm into both. I'm not picky."

Oh.

Brooke scrubs a hand over her face in exasperation. 

 **April 12, 1859**  
"Blue's expecting." Del informs him.

He glances towards the Golden Retriever lounging on the end of his bed. "How do you know?" She doesn't  _look_  pregnant, but you can't really tell for a while.

"She started to nest in my closet, so I asked Connie. She told me that she's around twenty-two days."

Will glances back towards Blue. "She's about three weeks, then. That's a third of the pregnancy."

Del shrugs. "So, who's her mate? One of Ginny's foxhounds? Or Chessie-"

"Roscoe."

Will chokes. "Shouldn't you be upset or something?" Brooke and Del didn't exactly get along.

Del snorts. "Have you ever seen Golden Retriever/Great Dane mixes?"

Will shakes his head. "They're adorable. Roscoe's purebred, so is Blue, and we should get cute little mutt-puppies."

 **May 9, 1859**  
"Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

Brooke doesn't jump. He's starting to think it's impossible to startle her. She glances over her shoulder towards Will.

"Come here, you can feel the puppies."

Will pads towards her, crouching in front of Blue's dog bed.

Brooke grabs his hand, guiding it to Blue's stomach.

"Whoa. That's amazing."

"Sometimes they move." Brooke turns to look at him, and their noses bump.

This is the fourth time they almost kiss, at four in the morning, hands on Blue's stomach, Brooke's hair pulled up messily and bags under her eyes, Will with bedhead and chapped lips.

Brooke leans in, eyes closing.

A puppy shifts under their palms.

They both jump apart, looking at each other, then at Blue.

 **May 26, 1859**  
Blue has eleven pups, which is three more than had really been expected.

Will only finds out Blue is in labor because Del comes and wakes him, still holding a puppy in a towel. She drags him out of bed and into the study, where Blue had made a nest of towels and old blankets, and is just delivering another puppy, licking it clean and biting off the umbilical cord.

After the puppy starts breathing, she allows Alfred to take it from her.

Alfred wraps the pup in a towel.

Will sits on the floor next to Brooke, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "How many has she had?"

"Three." She looks guiltily towards the door. "Roscoe wanted in when he heard Blue, but I wouldn't let him."

"I'm sure he'll be fine outside." Blue lays her head down, panting hard. "Poor thing."

Brooke hums in agreement.

They wait for a while for the next pup- about two hours.

"It's normal for a dog to rest between deliveries." Connie informs after she notices him glancing towards Blue every other minute.

Del is walking around, cradling a puppy. The other three are in the cozy little basket Alfred had found for them, still wrapped in their towels.

 **June 18, 1859**  
It takes four weeks for the puppies to open their eyes.

Brooke immediately takes one to show Will.   
\---------  
Will is writing some government document when she sets the pup on his desk. She kneels on the other side of his desk.

She smiles at him. "Look, they opened their eyes."

Will stares at her for a second. Brooke's smile falters.

He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair back. His fingers brush against her face as he pulls away.

"It was in your face." He tells her quietly.

Brooke nods, almost dazed.   
\----------  
Ever since they were colonies, Will had liked Brooke's hair. Even when it was the only part of her he liked. It was thick and wavy, and reminded him of the iridescence of raven feathers.

Of course, this was probably because of his preference for dark hair, not that he really understood that when he was a kid.

So when she smiles at him and a strand of her hair falls into her face, he reaches out and tucks it behind her ear without thinking.

His fingers brush against her jaw as he pulls away.

Her eyes are little dazed. Will swallows. "It was in your face."

She nods.

 **August 3, 1859**  
The pups get spread throughout the house. Anna and Kit claim one apiece. Kendall takes the one that was inexplicably fond of trying to attack boot laces. Aidan had told them he wanted the runt before Blue had even had them.

Will jumps when she sets Bailey on his desk.

Bailey wags his tail. He's one of Brooke's favorites, since he reminds her of Roscoe when he was a puppy.

Will raises his eyebrows. "What?"

Brooke shrugs. "You looked lonely."

 **December 31, 1859**  
"The kids are growing  _fast_." Brooke begins. "There's going to be a war. Soon. Next year or two."

Will sighs. "Yeah."

The bell rings twelve, and the states cheer.

Brooke laughs, and kisses him.

It's a short, chaste brush of her mouth on his, but his entire body freezes.

The clock has stopped chiming midnight by the time she pulls away from him.

"Happy New Year, William."

Will snaps out of it and smiles at her. "Happy New Year, Brooke."

 **March 17, 1860**  
Neither of them mentions the kiss, but Will starts bringing his own books up into the attic. It's peaceful, surprisingly, despite Will's tendency to ask too many questions.

Then there comes the day where Brooke wakes up with the sunset,  _A Tale of Two Cities_  in her hand. Her head is fuzzy the way it always is after a long nap.

Will glances over when she sits up, folding down the corner of a page to mark his place.

Brooke pushes her hair out of her face. "How long was I asleep?"

"A few hours."

Huh. She must have been more tired than she thought. 

 **May 11, 1860**  
Brooke reads the Count of Monte Cristo to him over a span of weeks, and Will doesn't understand half the plot because he spent  _way_  too much time thinking about kissing Brooke. 

 **June 3, 1860**  
Brooke's trying to tint the blue paint to the right shade of continental blue when Will comes upstairs.

She hears his footsteps on the stairs long before she sees him, but since he doesn't say anything she focuses on her paint.

 _There. Perfect_. She finally looks over at Will.

Who has a black eye and a split lip.

What the hell.

"What did you do?"

"I had a disagreement with Josh over abolitionism."

Brooke sighs. "Stay here."  
\----------  
Brooke comes back with a wet washcloth, grabbing one of his hands and cleaning the blood off from where his knuckles have split.

Her touch is gentle and light, hair falling from where it was tucked behind her ears into her face.

Will wants to kiss her.

Brooke lets go of his hand, looking up at him.

Will tucks her hair back behind her ear (safe, almost neutral territory).

He takes a chance, brushing his thumb over her lips.

Brooke stays still for all of thirty seconds before she leans forward to kiss him.

Kissing isn't nearly as fun when you have a split lip. Will winces, and Brooke pulls away.

Will nearly screams out of frustration.

 **July 17, 1860**  
Adrien hums as he braids her hair, and Brooke feels any tension she's been carrying melt away. Adrien is always gentler when he braids her hair than when Brooke does it herself.

"So, William?"

He doesn't even try to be subtle.

"I kissed him."

"I didn't think he was your type."

Brooke shrugs. "I didn't think he was my type either."

Adrien nods thoughtfully, tying the end of her braid off with a ribbon.

 **August 9, 1860**  
It takes a while to realize that Brooke is asleep.

Her head is pillowed in her arms, one of her charcoals still held in her hand.

Will snorts, setting down the Austen book Nicky had recommended.

He glances towards her sketchbook and smiles as he recognizes Roscoe.

Brooke came around to steal Bailey when she took Roscoe out on walks sometimes. She'd offered to train him too, and Will regretted not taking her up on the offer. Bailey had chewed up three shoes.

Will shakes his head and takes the charcoal out of her hand and sets it off to the side. 

 **December 20, 1860**  
Daniel had been shouting about states having the right to nullify federal laws and secede for so long everyone had learned to tune him out.

No one had actually expected him to  _leave_.   
\---------  
Will was talking with Sera when Daniel came in.

His eyes narrow at the paper clutched in Danny's hand.

Daniel thrusts the paper at Sera.

The color drains from Sera's face as she reads, and the paper falls from her hands.

Will picks it up.  
\--------  
Will vaguely registers that Sera fell to her knees, that she's crying.

He punches Daniel because  _how could he this was their family_.  
\--------  
Scott grabs the back of his shirt and pulls him away, shoves him back into the arms of another state.

David and Scarlett are on either side of their brother. Scarlett's fists are balled, held up in a defensive position, ready to hit anyone who tries to get to either of her brothers.

Will settles a little once he realizes Brooke is the one holding him back. She brushes a kiss against the back of his neck when he stops struggling against her hold, and he wonders if kisses will become a regular occurrence.

"Good?" She asks.

"Yeah."  
\---------  
Del is the one who picks up the Notice of Secession off the floor.

She is the one who looks their brother in the eyes and tells him to  _get out._

 **February 5, 1861**  
It's all so screwed up. In not even three months, they've lost seven siblings to the Confederacy.   
\----------  
"Are you  _drunk_?" Will asks incredulously.

Brooke shrugs. Raises the bottle of rum she may have nicked from the White House kitchen many many months ago. She'd been saving it, but fuck that. "Want some?"

"Hell yes."

 **April 19, 1861**  
Ginny has left, Scott is sulking, and Wes has gone into a depressive state.

They can all feel the war coming, like an itch under their skins.   
\--------  
One of the candles goes out, and Brooke looks away from her sketchbook.

That alone draws Will's attention. Usually, he has to call her name to get her to look away.

She goes back to her sketchbook, but she keeps glancing at the candle.

Will reaches for one of the lit ones, carefully relighting the other one.   
\--------  
Here is the thing about darkness: firstly, New York never gets completely dark. Secondly, they'll try and tell you that everything that is there in the dark is there in the light too, and that's a  _lie_.

Even before she was a street rat, Brooke had known that that was a lie. North America's personifications as a whole seemed to be 'blessed' with the sight. It might have been a blessing over in Europe, where there were pretty fairies and aesthetically pleasing monsters, but it sure as hell wasn't in the new world.

One word: wendigo.

Even without her memory, wendigos would have been engraved into her mind.

When she became a street rat, wendigos went to the bottom of the list of reasons she hated the dark. There were much more immediate threats.

So no, she doesn't particularly enjoy the dark. That probably didn't help her thing with Austin, since he adored the stars.

Will goes back to reading.

"Why'd you relight it?"

Will glances back up at her. "Because you didn't like that it was out."

 **May 3, 1861**  
Brooke hates cutting her hair short.

Well, not so much the act as what it represents. The only time she cuts her hair this short is during wars.

The scissors snip, and locks of black hair fall into the sink. Brooke looks at her reflection, touches the hair that just brushes her ears now.

Well. No use being upset over spilled milk.

Or cut hair.

 **May 4, 1861**  
Brooke stills as Will wraps a strand of her hair around his finger. He frowns a little.

"What?"

"I liked your hair."

"It isn't practical."

Will shrugs. "Doesn't mean it wasn't pretty."

 **September 18, 1862**  
Brooke comes back from Antietam.

It takes a while to find her this time, holed up in her closet with Roscoe and a few of the pups (who aren't really pups anymore). He'd checked the attic and library first.

His heart thumps in his chest when he sits down beside her. He  _hates_  small spaces. Has since 1813. Will's thankful when Brooke doesn't question why he leaves the door open.

He isn't expecting it when she buries her head in his shoulder and cries.

 **October 4, 1862**  
Will's never really seen Brooke fight another state.

It's easy to forget that she's one of the strongest states.

Cam winces when Austin shoves her down, and Will moves to intervene, but Cam grabs his arm. "Leave it. We have a battle to fight."

Austin kicks the rifle away, and Brooke twists, coming up with something.

Cam exhales shakily. "Brooke always has a knife on her. Always."

It's a flash of silver between her fingers, and she lashes out at Austin with it.

He pulls away, hand clapped to the cut leaking blood over his cheek, and Brooke lunges for her rifle.

Will's too far away to hear the words exchanged, but Brooke lowers her gun and Austin nods and falls back with his men. 

 **November 17, 1862**  
Brooke is reading in the attic again, and Will joins her because he can't sleep.

He leans against the wall and studies her as she reads.

Will thinks about the flash of silver in Brooke's hand when her gun had been knocked away, about the way she had fought Austin and the blood running down his cheekbone.

He swallows. "Where do your knives come from?"

Brooke actually looks up from her newest novel at this. She stares at him- assessing and calculating.

Then in a smooth movement, she pulls one of her ever-present knives from her boot and sets it down between them.

If he didn't know better, he'd think it was a hair stick or hat pin. But he can see the sharp edges gleaming and no matter how pretty it looks, it's clear it's meant to cut.

Brooke turns a page. "That one was made custom. I drew it and the ironworker made it. The others are all different."

Will dares to pick up the knife, studying it.

"When did you get your first one?"

"My first knife was a bayonet. And 1690."

"Was it always knives?"

Brooke glares at him. "You ask too many questions."

"Well?"

She rolls her eyes. "No, knives weren't always my weapon of choice."

Will raises his eyebrows and nearly cuts his fingers on the knife he's been idly holding when he stops paying attention to it. He hurriedly sets it back down and wonders how Brooke can flip it when she's spaced out. "Really? Why stick with them then?"

Brooke carefully marks her place, setting her book down. For a moment he's worried he's offended her and she's going to leave.

Brooke extends her left hand silently.

He doesn't realize what he's looking at until she turns to show him the back, and then back to her palm, and then he feels sick.

A patch of raised scar tissue shows through the webbing between her thumb and fingers on both sides. Something had gone _through_  her hand.

Brooke fixes him with a steady, unwavering look. "I misfired an arrow through my hand. Archery sort of lost its appeal after that. When I went onto the streets, it wasn't smart to be unarmed. Therefore, the bayonet."

Will accepts this with a nod, offering Brooke her knife. She slips it back into her boot.

"So, do you have sheathes or are you going to cut off your foot one of these days?"

Brooke raises her eyebrows at him.

"Right. Stupid question." He decides to ask another stupid question. "Could you teach me?"

Brooke goes still. "No. You wouldn't like them. Knives are too personal."

 **November 23, 1862**  
Will isn't surprised that Brooke is awake at this unholy hour of night. He is, however, surprised that she's sitting on the kitchen floor with an entire pot of coffee and a mug. Her head is tilted back against the cabinets, eyes closed.

"Brooke, what the hell."

She doesn't even open her eyes. "Shh. I'm tired."

Will snorts, sitting down on the floor across from her. "Then you should be in your bed, not drinking coffee by the pot."

Brooke huffs out a laugh. "You're oblivious. You've known me for over a century. Literally the entire east coast would understand this scenario. But not you."

"Explain it, then." He's genuinely curious at this point. 

Brooke shakes her head and opens her eyes. She has dark bags under her eyes, so dark that it must have been a few days at least since she got real sleep. 

"Coffee doesn't work for me the same way it does for you. Regular coffee makes me calmer. Tired. The coffee I drink in the morning is Turkish and tastes like tar and is so much stronger than American stuff. I haven't slept in five days. I'm tired."

Will thought of the various incidents that had happened because Brooke was sleep-deprived. The concussion she'd got when she'd fell asleep standing and then fell onto the hard kitchen tile. And yet, here she is, about to fall asleep and probably repeat the incident.

Will stands, stretching. He offers Brooke a hand to get up. 

She shakes her head. "I'm good here."

Will frowns at her. "Brooke, if you don't get up and actually go to your room and sleep right now, I'm going to pick you up and  _carry_  you."

Brooke gives him a venomous glare. She ignores his hand, and pushes herself up. 

 **December, 1862**  
Christmas isn't pleasant that year. 

Del's sensibilities won't allow for a lack of a Christmas- there are children, after all. Del ropes the rest of them into decorating, and hangs up the ornaments.

The issue is when Alfred notices. 

Del had hung up the painted state flag ornaments-  _all_  of them. 

Christmas day isn't the same. The older states are exhausted. The territories and younger states still tear into wrapping paper enthusiastically, but they all are keenly aware that their family is fractured. 

Will sits in one of the armchairs, watching his sister distribute presents to the kids, and drinking the almost overly-sweet hot chocolate Cass had made. 

He startles when Brooke suddenly hops onto one of the arms of the chair, almost spilling the hot chocolate. 

Brooke suppresses a smile. 

Will frowns at her, leaning over to set the mug on the table. He gestures to the package in her hands. "What's that?" 

Brooke hands it to him. "It's for you."

Will raises an eyebrow and when Brooke shrugs in response, he tears through the paper. 

Chocolate. 

Emily had gotten into Will's stash of candy last month, and he hadn't had time to replace it yet. 

Brooke picks at a splash of lavender paint over her knuckles.

Will sets the box on the table. 

He grabs Brooke's collar and tugs her down into a kiss.

It's short, a chaste brush of lips. 

Will pulls away. 

For the first time, Brooke looks like he caught her off guard. 

"Merry Christmas, Brooke."

Brooke smiles. "Merry Christmas, Will." 


	2. Chapter 2

**February 15, 1863**  
Brooke hates the war for a lot of reasons. It's ruining the family, it's hurting Al, it's a lot of work, and it's wrecking the last semblance of her love-life.

There is never time. If she isn't busy, then Will is.

She's been trying to read the same book for three weeks.

There is too much to do: battles to fight, housework to do, food to cook, territories to take care of, sleep to catch up on, paperwork to sign and read and mail.

The war is raging at full force, and it isn't like last year, when they could carve out time together in the attic. Alfred is barely coherent sometimes.

There is never time.

 **March 14, 1863**  
Will rechecks the strap of his rifle as he walks down the hallway.

"So you're leaving today?"

He stops walking, turning to look over at Brooke's door. She's leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. She's only in a chemise, so that he can see the bandages wrapped over her shoulder. Connie had had to dig out the bullet. He forces himself to focus on the present. "Del's going to Virginia and I'm going with her."

Brooke nods. "Good luck."

Will glances back towards the stairs. Del can wait a few moments. He drops his rucksack and crosses the distance between them.

He'd meant it to be a quick goodbye kiss on her cheek, but Brooke turns her head.

Her mouth slants over his, lips parting, deepening the kiss. Her back hits against her door and he kisses a line down her throat and then goes back to kissing her.

Brooke's hands are in his hair and when she bites his lip he groans.

Will runs his fingers through Brooke's short hair, marveling at the softness.

"Will! Are you coming or not?" Del calls from downstairs.

He breaks the kiss, stepping away from Brooke. "I have to go." Will isn't sure if it's supposed to be an excuse.

Brooke nods after a moment. "I know." 

 **June 29, 1863**  
Will startles awake, feeling the familiar spidery sensation of soldiers crossing into his borders.

After a moment, he gets up. He yanks on his uniform, laces his boots, and grabs his rifle.

He's gone before morning.

 **July 5, 1863**  
Will comes back from Gettysburg with a grim smile and a body covered in bandages.

Brooke's eyes are worried, and she doesn't talk to him that day.

 **July 6, 1863**  
Will is tired of Brooke's silent treatment by the second day.

Moving is sort of painful, but he struggles his way up into the attic and watches as Brooke scowls at her sketchbook.

Will winces at the sight of dark, angry charcoal lines.

He settles down beside her, wincing again as he jars his injuries.

Really, only a few of them were from Gettysburg. The rest had just been  _reopened_  by Gettysburg.

Brooke glares at him.

"I know you're mad that I went without you."

Brooke's glare softens into an unimpressed look.

"I'm not sorry. I wouldn't have wanted you at Gettysburg. I didn't want anyone else there, either. It was bloody and awful and hell on earth."

Brooke rolls her eyes. "You're so stupid. I'm not mad because you left without me, I'm mad you snuck out in the middle of the night and didn't even have the courtesy to  _tell me_. I'm mad you decide to run off to a battle and came back covered in bandages. I'm not a damsel and I'm not in distress. I don't need you to protect me."

Will reaches out to brush a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. "I know. You never need anyone to protect you. I kind of want to protect you anyway."

Brooke shakes her head incredulously, and kisses him.

Will kisses back, pulling Brooke into his lap. She makes a surprised noise at the sudden movement, hands coming up to rest on his shoulders reflexively.

Will overbalances, falling back against the wall.

Which,  _ouch_.

Brooke pulls away. "You okay?"

Will exhales slowly. "Give me a second."

Brooke frowns. "Maybe we should wait-"

"I'm fine."

Brooke raises her eyebrows. "...Yeah, I bet. You literally barely even touched the wall and looked like you wanted to die so forgive me if I don't believe that."

Will shrugs. "You're worth it."

That actually manages to make Brooke speechless for a brief moment before she responds. "You're high on painkillers."

Will shrugs, which sort of hurts too. "Probably." He mouths at Brooke's neck when she gives him another unimpressed look.

Brooke shivers when he grazes his teeth over the delicate, unscarred skin over her collarbone. "Not here." She bites out.

Will can agree with that, at least. As many blankets and pillows Brooke had up here, the floor was hard and would be hell on his back, where the injuries were concentrated.

If they were going to do this, they were going to do it properly.

Reluctantly, he lets go of Brooke so she can stand.

Brooke offers Will her hand to pull him up and he takes it. 

 **July 7, 1863**  
The next morning Will wakes up with Brooke's face nuzzled against his neck and her long legs tangled with his.

It's nice. Brooke is warm and soft and her short hair is messy from where she slept.

He runs his fingers through Brooke's hair, and wants to laugh when she sighs contentedly and curls closer.

He pulls the quilt higher on her shoulders, and settles in for a wait.

It takes another half hour for Brooke to wake up, and he smiles when she kisses his neck as a greeting.

Brooke shifts into a more comfortable position, laying her head on his chest. Will threads his fingers through her hair again.

At some point, they'd have to talk about this, but it could wait for now.

 **August 12, 1863**  
Mostly, things stay the same. They're both still busy, but now Brooke can occasionally be persuaded to let someone else do it. The major differences involve the fact that she's pretty much claimed the left side of Will's bed and the kissing.

 **August 20, 1863**  
"I think that if we change this around it'll work better, see the wording is weird." Will explained, pointing at the drafts of the reports. Del nodded.

"Alright, but what should we change it-" Del trailed off, staring as Brooke flopped down on the couch beside her.

The other state curled up, resting her head in Will's lap.

"Wake me up in ten minutes." She muttered, and Will nodded, unfazed.

Del raised an eyebrow. "Does this happen often?"

Will shrugged, still frowning at the report. "Sometimes."

 _Ridiculous, the pair of them_. Del shook her head. "What should it be changed to?"

 **September 13, 1863**  
The dream is horror and fear made poison, suffocating and dark and endless.

Will wakes up and for a second he can't breathe. ( _If he inhales, would he breathe in dirt_?) His mind is a restless, relentless litany of  _buried buried buried_ -

A lamp is lit on the nightstand.

Brooke is back at his side in seconds, shoving the comforter back.

She reaches out for him and then seems to think better of it, moving away again.

Will swallows, digging his nails into his palms.

It hurts, which means he's awake, which means this is real, which means he's free.

He forces his breathing to even out, and when his heartbeat slows to an acceptable rate Will looks over at his bedmate.

Brooke is setting candles around his room, lighting up the entire room.

She settles back on the bed once she's decided there's enough candles.

She doesn't touch him, just waits. Will wonders who gave her the experience needed to handle his panic attacks without batting an eye.

He sighs, repressing the dream. He isn't going to get any more sleep tonight.

"Did I wake you up?" His voice is rough and scratchy. Will winces.

Brooke shakes her head. "I only came up a little while ago."

That's right. She hadn't been in bed when he'd gone to sleep. He'd missed her.

"How'd you know?" To turn on the lamp, to light all those candles.

She picks at her nails. "Adrien."

Because it had been Adrien who'd found him in 1813: shell-shocked, covered in dirt, his hands torn to hell, shaking from head to toe. It had been Adrien who'd dragged him to Matt, who'd been able to get a message off to Del.

Will rolls the fact that Adrien had told her over in his head. He's almost surprised to find he doesn't care.

They sit in comfortable silence for a little while, before Will shifts, laying his head in Brooke's lap.

She's almost overwhelmingly gentle when she brushes his hair out of his eyes. "What do you need?"

Will closes his eyes. "I don't want to go back to sleep tonight. Can you just talk, or something?"

"I could read. I have Great Expectations or Sense and Sensibility."

"Great Expectations."

 **November 6, 1863**  
It's late afternoon when Will leaves to go join the army on their way to Virginia.

Brooke should be coming with him and the others, but instead, she'd got herself shot barely two days ago when she'd gone off to fight with Kendall. The bullet had hit her calf bone and broken it and was taking way too long to heal for her tastes. Connie said she needed to stop trying to walk on a shattered tibia and ordered that she actually rest.

Brooke's still annoyed about it.

Will presses goodbye kisses to her jaw and she shoves him away. "You better go or Scott's gonna come up here and drag you downstairs."

Will laughs and captures her mouth in what better be the last goodbye kiss.

He pulls away, resting his forehead against hers. "You'll be here when I get back?"

Brooke stretches languidly, relaxing back into his pillows. "No promises."

Will laughs again.

 **November 7, 1863**  
The battle is quick and afterward, Foster rolls his eyes at Will. "Go home. I'll tell Scott."

Will hesitates. "You sure?"

"Yeah. Me and Scott and Oliver are more than enough to deal with any offensive Lee tries to pull off, unlikely as it it."

He was right. There probably wouldn't be anymore action. Will smiles. "Thanks."  
\----------  
Will didn't think Brooke actually would still be there.

He'd known that Brooke was supposed to be letting her leg heal, but usually, she was gone before he woke up, and never there if he'd be gone.

It's early, the dawn just breaking.

For a moment, he stares in the doorway, before Roscoe lifts his head from the foot of the bed and lets out a soft growl that Will knows is all show.

Will rubs behind his ears to make him shut up and takes it all in.

Brooke in- was that his shirt?- sleeping peacefully, wrapped in his quilt and taking up half the bed. Roscoe is sprawled over the foot of the bed, probably laying on Brooke's legs, and probably getting fur all over the blankets.

It's overwhelmingly domestic.

Will peels off his shirt and boots, tossing them in his closet before kneeling beside Brooke. She's already half awake, so he doesn't feel guilty about waking her up.

"Hey, I thought you said 'No promises.'"

Brooke blinks at him a few seconds before laying her head back down. "Let Roscoe out, Nicky'll walk him. He owes me for making me watch his demonic cat that time it ate my paintbrushes."

Will rolls his eyes, but gets up to open his door anyway.

"Ros, go find Nicky." Brooke mumbles into the pillow, and to Will's surprise, the dog immediately stands and bounds out. Nicky had been asleep on the couch when Will had come in a few minutes ago, so it doesn't take long for Roscoe to find him. He closes the door once Roscoe disappears down the stairs and a string of Dutch curses follows.

He steals some of the blanket from Brooke, and she lets him. She curls closer to him, and Will still hasn't gotten used to how  _touchy_  she is. Not clingy, but definitely a cuddler.

"Did Nicky start cursing?"

"In Dutch."

She huffs out a laugh. "Roscoe blurs the lines between 'go find' and 'jump on top of'."

Will laughs, too. Going from asleep to '170-pound dog on your chest' wasn't a pleasant experience. "How's your leg?"

Brooke huffs. "I think it's fine. Connie disagrees."

Will smiles. "Connie's probably right."

Brooke yawns. "Let's go to sleep." She suggests, laying her head on his shoulder. "I'm tired."

Something in his chest tightens painfully at the sight of her sleepy blue eyes. "Yeah, let's go to sleep."

 **November 18, 1863**  
Brooke leans on his shoulder as he works, and Will smiles.

"I'm gonna go home to get something." She says, and his smile falls.

"What-?"

"Do you want to come with me?"

 **November 20, 1863**  
"So... we're just here to get stuff for Thanksgiving?"

Brooke nods, eyeing the selection of spices and saying something in quick French to the seller. The man's polite smile falters.

Will recognizes haggling when he sees it and isn't interested in something he can't understand, so he wanders away.

Brooke finds him staring at bananas a few minutes later.

Bananas don't grow anywhere around them. Will hadn't seen them around in decades, let alone ate them, yet here they were.

"You have  _bananas_."

"Imported. Cuban." Brooke gives him a bemused look. "Do you want one?"

Will nods, and Brooke laughs, shaking her head before going up to argue with the shopkeeper for one.  
\----------  
They end up bringing home an entire bag of shellfish, four lobsters that had been a pain to find, and an assortment of fish.

Sam and Connie spend a few minutes bouncing around in happiness.

 **November 26, 1863**  
Last year Thanksgiving had been a disaster. The year before that, there hadn't been a Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was Sam's holiday at first, but it had eventually become everyone's. As such, the table is a mixture of food from everywhere, no thought given as to whether it's  _actually_  appropriate.

Thanksgiving is such an old tradition that they all forgot the youngest territories had no idea it existed. They're all bewildered as to why the older states are rushing around to get last minute ingredients and why they're spending the whole day cooking or why they're warned off lunch.

They're reminded of this fact when Thomas tilts his head and asks, "What's pumpkin pie?"  
\----------  
"Just one bite, come on."

Brooke eyes his fork with obvious distaste. "Uh, no."

Nicky laughs. "Will, she's never gonna eat scrapple. Trust me, I've tried."

"You eat everything, though."

Brooke shot him a look. "I don't eat things that look like they should be used to build houses."

 **December 3, 1863**  
Will brings his reports to the attic out of nostalgia, and a few minutes later Brooke joins him with a few pieces of Al's paperwork.

They work silently for around an hour before Brooke asks a random question.

"Was Cordelia the only personification you'd been with?" Brooke asks. "Before me, obviously."

Will raises his eyebrows. Brooke doesn't give into her curiosity like this very often.

He figures he's asked enough personal questions from Brooke for her to have earned this one. "No. Ginny, during the Revolution."

Brooke nods thoughtfully.

Will goes back to writing the reports. Someone has to keep records, for Alfred or the states. They can't forget what happened in this war.

"Did you know Austin was the only personification I ever dated?"

That surprises him enough that he leaves a blot of ink on the paper.

" _Really_? You and Adrien never-?"

Brooke flicks her fingers in a careless motion. "Adrien and I had sex to work off tension. We don't care to be more than what we already are."

Will raises his eyebrows. "Callie?"

Brooke shrugs. "We never dated."

"Wait, so the rumors aren't true?"

"They're true, but we didn't date."

Will processes this information for a moment. ".... are all the rumors about you and Callie true?"

Brooke gives him an odd look. "Um, you have to be specific. There are several."

"The ones about you and Callie and Austin."

Namely, that there had even been a thing between the three of them, either before or during Austin and Brooke's relationship.

"Oh." Brooke hesitates for a moment. "Yeah. It was after Cal's statehood."

Will nods, silently accepting it, and goes back to his paper.

 **December 13, 1863**  
It's hard to figure out how much of Brooke's reputation is real and how much is gossip without actually asking.

He's curious, so he does. One lazy Sunday morning when Brooke is curled up against him, calm and sated and happy, he asks her how many states.

Brooke opens her eyes when the question sinks in. She thinks for a second or two and then answers.

"Four. Five counting you."

Will leans his head against hers. "So, me, Austin, Callie, Adrien and...?"

Brooke snorts. "Adrien isn't a state. You asked about states, not personifications in general."

Will huffs. "Fine. Personifications?"

"Eight total. Including you."

Three non-states. "None of Mexico's?"

"Nope."

"...Hadley?"

"Nope."

"Cecilia."

Brooke tucked her feet against his legs. Will wondered how the hell her feet were always cold. "That's one."

Will thought for a few moments. "I give up. Who's the other province?"

She shrugged. "Brian."

"...I can't even picture that."

"It was awkward."

He really didn't want to know. "Give me a hint about the other states?"

She rests her head against his shoulder. "South."

"Uh...Evangeline?"

"Nope."

Not Tim, not Drew. "Josh?"

"After he called me a mulatto?"

"I see your point." That left the coast. "Flora?"

"I'm not entirely sure she swings my way, so no."

Ginny only really cared about Scott, so that was out. " _David?_ When? _"_

Brooke shrugged. "We sit next to each other when we're in alphabetical order. We talk sometimes."

Will processes that. "So the other is Daniel?"

"Nope."

"Wait, there's only one left besides him-"

Brooke turned serious. "Hey, don't spread that around, I don't think she's telling people."

"I won't. It's just... Scarlett? Like she spent half the revolution batting her eyelashes at her revolutionaries."

Brooke shrugs noncommittally.

Will wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her closer.

"When did you and Del decide you were siblings?" Brooke asks.

True siblings- or as true as beings who are not born can get- were a rarity among personifications, or at least the North Americans.

There aren't words in the human lexicon to really describe the ways they relate. They aren't human, but they aren't entirely inhuman either.

How do you explain to a human that these are the states you formed a nation with, that you are tied together in a net of shared identity (American)? How do you explain that you share a people, that your people go and become their people and vice versa, that some families can be traced through dozens of them, across the country and back again? How do you explain that you would live and fight and die for them, any of them?

How do you explain to a human that they are formed from dirt and thought and memory, that they are created from nothing more than that?

There are no words, so they choose their bonds. Siblings, lovers, friends.

 _Sibling_  is the easiest to use.  _Sibling_  can get you into a hospital room.  _Sibling_  can explain how you grew up together, the rivalries and the closeness.  _Sibling_  is the least exclusionary, broadest word they can use to describe the United States, the idea that they are all Americans, that all of them are Alfred's, that he'd claimed them and chose them, over and over.

Will calls Del his sister and it means something different then when he says it about Sam or Connie. Less of throwaway word, more of the truth.

"I don't think we really did. It was probably when were still colonies. We were always close."

Brooke hummed. "I knew about Nicky. From the moment I first saw him."

"What's it like? Having a real sibling?"

Brooke pressed her hand over his heart. "It's like your heart is tied to theirs." She answered after a few minutes. "When Nicky died the first time it felt like my heart was being shredded. He says when I died he felt hollowed out."

Will shudders at the mention of Brooke's first death. He still had dreams about her slumping limp into his arms. When he was younger he'd been plagued with nightmares about him and Daniel carrying her home, ones where Alfred looked at him in disgust and said _this is your fault_.

He brushes his fingers over the scar under her heart, left by a bullet that had nicked her heart and hit her lung and took her first life.

The first death always scars.

"Why?"

Brooke grabs his hand, lacing her fingers with his. "Because I thought Alfred would be heartbroken. That he'd miss you." Her other hand is still over his heart, and she taps her fingers. "You were the capital."

 **Early Spring, 1864**  
Jackson gets desperate.

He kills states on purpose because he knows it hurts America when they die.

He shoots Caleb, and they never think that Jackson purposely sought him out. States die and come back all the time. It's just coincidence he found the only state on that battlefield.

He gets Adam with a bayonet to femoral artery at one battle, and then hits Cal with the butt of a rifle so hard her skull fractures at the next battle, and they start to put the pattern of violence together.

He shoots Cass and Cordelia returns the favor, and suddenly it's open season on Union states.

Del stumbles home one day, bloody and shell-shocked and missing two fingers, and they learn that death isn't the worst thing Jackson can do to them.

 **June 9, 1864**  
The world is narrowed to the bloody mess Jackson made of Del's hand, and the tears streaming down her face as Connie tries to clean it.

Del is  _crying_.

Will's already trying to figure how out how he's going to find Jackson.

There's a gentle touch to his cheek, and he tenses.

"Will,  _lieve_ , look at me."

Brooke cups his jaw when he doesn't respond, moving to block his view of Del.

"William. Babe, look at me."

He does, and Brooke curses in Dutch under her breath.

"Connie, is Del okay?"

Connie doesn't even look up. "She'll live. It might take a while for the fingers to grow back. It's messy, but that's never stopped the healing process before."

Brooke meets his eyes. "Did you hear that? Will, Del's going to be okay." One of her hands slips down to grab his hand, and she begins tugging him upstairs.

She drags him into her room, glaring when Scott tries to talk to her.

Brooke shuts the door, and that's when the panic begins to set in.

Will sinks down on her bed, and Brooke comes to sit near him.

"Will. You need to stop. You're going to hyperventilate. Here, breathe with me."

Brooke smiles at him when he finally gets his breath under control.

She moves to sit beside him, pulling his head down into her lap. She brushes her hand through his hair in a soothing gesture.

"I want to kill him."

"He'd kill you first." Brooke says, matter-of-fact. "You aren't strong enough. If Sam can't do it, then you won't be able to."

"I have to  _try_. It's better than letting him hurt all of us again and again."

Brooke runs her fingers through his hair. "You're just giving him an opportunity to hurt  _you_."

"He hurt Del. What would you do if it had been Nicky?"

It could have been Nicky. He wasn't as good as Del (no one was), but he had been shooting at Jackson since Caleb had gotten hurt.

Brooke's eyes flick towards the sheathed stiletto knives on her dresser. That's an answer of its own.

Her voice is soft when she finally responds. "He would hurt you." She sighs heavily. "Come on. I know panic attacks wear people down." She presses him back onto the back, throwing her quilt over him.

Brooke's bed smells like her- like paint and her delicate flowery perfume and the stuff she puts in her hair to keep it soft.

"Brooke." When Will says her name, it sounds like he meant to say  _please_.

She freezes in her tracks, halfway to the door.

Will sighs when she climbs under the covers with him, pulling him so that his back is against her chest and wrapping an arm around his stomach.

 **June 10, 1864**  
Brooke doesn't typically sleep long enough or often enough to get nightmares.

She still gets them, of course. It's a fact of being a personification. Your body heals but your mind says  _fuck that, it happened, we remember, we're traumatized_  and decides to fuck up your sleep cycle.

Brooke's mind likes to take advantage of her perfect recall. It twists and warps and fractures memories. In dreams, Alfred never comes to find her, Adrien doesn't pull her out of the river that time she almost drowned, Nicky doesn't forgive her for not telling him. Sometimes they lose the revolution: the patriots hang, Alfred the bright sun of their little planetary system fizzes out and leaves the originals orbiting around a dead star, and they never build a family that sprawls from sea to shining sea.

Those are among the worst.

Sometimes the memories aren't tampered with at all. Sometimes it's just the blood on her hands the first time she killed something (a rabbit) or frostbite turning her fingers black. Sometimes it's the pattern of black-blue-violet bruises that had stained Sam's skin once and a box of trophies upended over the stormy waves of the ocean. Sometimes it's Nicky's first death, his cold hand in hers, the lack of a heartbeat, her own heart ripping itself to shreds in her chest.

Tonight it's the bloody gap on Del's hand and her hollow eyes, it's Cal's hair matted with dried blood, it's Adam's blood dripping onto the carpet and Connie's tears as she stitches him up and the fist Nicky put through the wall, it's Jackson's smile and blood and death.   
\----------  
She wakes up covered in cold sweat, her hand automatically reaching for a knife that isn't under her pillow.

Brooke shudders, and looks over at Will.

She closes her eyes and pulls herself out of bed. Roscoe whines from the foot of the bed, Bailey stretched out half on top of him, and she rubs behind his ear.

She pulls on her uniform silently, flipping her knives before she sheathes them.

When she's done, she kneels beside the bed and brushes Will's hair out of his eyes.

And then she leaves.

 **June 11, 1864**  
Will wakes up to an empty bed and doesn't think much of it.

It isn't until after he gets dressed that he notices the other absence.

Brooke's knives aren't laid out carefully on the side of his dresser. When she's staying home she only carries the one in her boot, sometimes not even that.

Will has a bad feeling.

He goes across the hall to Brooke's room.

Her uniform is gone.   
\----------  
"Where is Brooke?"

Nicky had come to get Roscoe and Bailey without Will saying anything.

Nicky doesn't meet his eyes. "She said she was going to catch up with Kendall and go with him."

Will's blood goes cold.   
\----------  
She splits away from Kendall as soon as the battle starts, knowing he can fend for himself today.

Brooke closes her eyes, bringing up the memories of Del's missing fingers, Will's devastation. Sam's face  _after_ , and Sam's hollow eyes when Jackson had made a mockery of her pain. Nicky's shaking hands when he'd seen Cam carrying Adam in. Addison's scarred face. Kendall coming home with Genevieve in his arms after Tim handed her over, saying she wasn't safe with them anymore. Callie's hair threaded through with blood. Cordelia with blood splatter on her face. Cass's first life gone.

Her mind keeps going back to Will and the grief written into every inch of him.

She opens her eyes and palms one of her knives and goes looking for the Confederacy.  
\----------  
She doesn't let herself feel remorse or regret or guilt.

Brooke doesn't think too hard about it at all.

She just lets the rage burn her from the inside out.

Brooke has down horrible things for her family before, and it is likely she will do them many more times in her life. 

She leaves Jackson bloody and gasping and  _alive_ , no matter how much she wants to bash his head in with her rifle like he'd done to Callie, or eviscerate him the way he'd done to Adam. She wishes she could shot him point-blank the way he'd shot Cass or Caleb.

She settles for this, for the retribution that Will and Del wouldn't be able to get on their own.

Death would be a mercy, would allow for quicker, near painless healing.

(She is not merciful.)

 **June 12, 1864**  
She finds Kendall when it's time to go back home, and he actually takes a step away from her.

"Jesus, Brooke. Did you get shot?"

"No. I met Jackson."

Kendall's eyes widened, fury rising. "What did he do to you?"

"It's more a question of what  _I_  did to  _him_."

 **June 13, 1864**  
Brooke and Kendall come home, and Will's out the door in seconds.

He's had a speech about how he was worried and she can't just leave in the middle of the night prepared (Which was sort of hypocritical), but it dies when he catches sight of her.

It's hard to believe Brooke's uniform was ever navy blue when it's dark with dried blood.

Will's heart is in his stomach and he grabs her shoulders to look her over for injuries because he can't take another Del right now. "Are you hurt? Were you hurt?"

Brooke shakes her head and he kisses her and doesn't give a fuck who sees.

Brooke leans into his touch, when he pulls away, she reaches up to cup his face and then seems to reconsider as she catches sight of her hands. "I'm fine, Will."

"You're covered in blood."

"Oh. Yeah. That." She pauses. "Don't overreact."

Two-word-guarantee to give him a heart attack. " _Brooke_."

"I didn't know which was Jackson's dominant hand."

It's a peculiar, seemingly unrelated statement. The meaning catches on, and Will's eyes widen.

Jackson had taken two fingers from Del's dominant hand with a pocket knife.

Brooke had talked Will out of going after him because he wouldn't be able to beat him.

But Brooke was strong, she was New York with her strength carried over from every empire on the backs of those that came seeking freedom. Brooke, strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Austin and temper Cal's anger.

Strong enough to pin a nation to the ground and return his violence two-fold.

Will's throat is tight, and he kisses Brooke again. She melts against him, and there are no words he can possibly say so he just kisses her.

 **June** **19,** **1864**  
Del is annoyed with being relegated to the sidelines, but there isn't much she can do when she's still trying to regrow her fingers.

She takes on all the paperwork responsibilities she can, even though Will keeps stealing it from her and doing it instead.

One day she gets tired of it, and elbows him when he tries to take the papers. "Will, I'm state leader, not you. Back off."  
\----------  
Will leans against her and Brooke smiles. She reaches up to touch him and he turns his head to kiss her palm.

"Can I ask a question?"

Brooke nods, adding her signature to a paper. It's her work this time, at least, not Alfred's nation work.

"Why didn't you want to be state leader?"

He's wondered that since the war began, since Del and Cam became the leaders.

Brooke is the eldest female state after Ginny, and she hadn't put up a fight for state leader.

It didn't make sense. He'd seen her during the revolution. Brooke liked power. Being state leader was power.

"I didn't want it."

She doesn't elaborate. Will drops it.

 **November 24,** **1864**  
"I think it's almost over." Brooke whispers. 

They're up in the attic, cuddling in Brooke's nest of blankets and pillows and art supplies. (Seriously, Will had to toss a paintbrush across the room because it was stabbing him in the side and he's pretty sure there's a pastel marking up one of his legs.)

He doesn't have to ask to know she means the war. "I think it's almost over too."

 **April 9, 1865**  
Ginny surrenders and the war is ending and Will kisses Brooke.

 **July 17, 1865**  
The war is over, Jackson is dead and has been dead since May, when him and Alfred shot each other and only one of them came back. 

The war is over and the government summons them for a tribunal for the rebelling states. 

The Reconstruction hearing puts them all on high-alert from the beginning.

Politicians never do anything without purpose. There is a reason they want the union to play pretty pawns.

\----------

Brooke complains about petticoats and corsets and basically every single undergarment ever. Will doesn't blame her. He was pretty sure that her skirts and petticoats and whatever the fuck else collectively weighed as much as their military packs. And corsets were literally horrifying.

Despite all that, Brooke looks nice. Her dress is a pretty mint color that almost matches his tie, which is pretty much the only reason he's wearing a tie at all.

Brooke's hair is still too short to be entirely proper, but she hides that by braiding it into a crown and then twisting it into a bun at the nape of her neck. She digs her 'pretty' knives out of a drawer somewhere and uses them as hairpins.

The knives are more delicate than any of the others, less sturdy and more elegant, with curved lines and hilts sort of like wings. 

\----------

State stars were taken out of storage in the white house. 

State stars, some of which were older than the men in this room, were stolen from their rightful owners. 

They strip the southerners of their statehood. 

 **August 3, 1865**  
"So, you're going to go home?" Will leans against her door frame, looking over the half-packed room.

Brooke nods, eyes wistful. "Yeah. I've been away for too long."

He fidgets for a moment and Brooke waits for the inevitable question.

"Are we- this isn't going to end, is it? Now that the war's over?"

"Do you want it to?"

"No," He answers without a second of hesitation. 

Brooke smiles. "I don't want it to, either."

Will's face breaks into a smile. "I'll see you around, then?"

She rolls her eyes, but can't seem to suppress her own smile. "Yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more part that should be shorter than the first time, hopefully.


	3. Chapter 3

**October 3, 1865**  
The first State of the Union meeting since the end of the war is tomorrow, and instead of going over her paperwork, Brooke is trying to get Bailey to roll over.

Will got to host it, since most of the Southerners and territories had stayed with Alfred in the Philadelphia house. The South was mostly staying until their stars were returned.

The North had scattered back to their various states, and even Will had left the Philadelphia house.

Bailey finally manages a pitiful roll, and Will rolls his eyes fondly at Brooke's excitement.

 **October 11, 1865**  
"What kind of insomniac takes this many naps?"

Brooke lifts her head off the couch cushion. "I can't get to sleep at night half the time, and naps are a way to supplement that. You've seen what happens when I get too sleep-deprived."

Will winces.

Brooke catches his wrist and pulls him down beside her. "Take a nap with me."

 **October 17, 1865**  
"Want to go get something to eat?" Will turns when Brooke doesn't respond. "Brooke? Hey, you can't just go to sleep right now."

Brooke frowns when he flicks her ear. "Stop it." There's a whining note in her voice he hadn't heard since Valley Forge. "I'm sleeping."

Across the room, Roscoe's ear perk at the sound of his owner's voice, then fall again when he realizes she isn't in any trouble.

"You are not. Want to go get food?"

Her lips purse together suspiciously. "What kind?"

"The kind that give you diabetes. Or heart attacks at twenty-four. Or both."

"Sugary?"

Will smiles. "Definitely."  
\---------  
"Not a word."

Brooke tries to restrain a smile. Fails.

Figures. They get dressed, and it's raining cats and dogs.

Will sighs. "I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Don't be. I like storms." She kicked off her shoes before jumping over the back of the couch. Brooke tugged back the curtains so she could watch the rain.

Will snorts. "You're such a kid."

"You could be too, if you cared less." He stands there for a little while, watching her. She grinned every time lightning flickered over the city. She looks over, catching him watching her. "They make me sleepy." She explains, gesturing to the rain. Will sits beside her.

After a few moments of peaceful silence, he wraps an arm around her and tugs her so that her head is on his shoulder.

 **February 13, 1866**  
The meeting in New York is over.

Will can't find the state that had hosted it.   
\---------  
"Do you know where Brooke is?"

Nicky makes some sort of hand gesture. "Trinity Church. Steeple."  
\---------  
Will sits cross legged beside Brooke.

Her bag is beside her, open, revealing the papers from the meeting, her case of pencils and pens, a sketchbook, and no less than three novels.

The state herself, however, is sitting with another book open on the windowsill in front of her. She looks up when he sits down.

He pulls her bag over, fishing out the other novels.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins; Lady Audley's Secret and Trail of the Serpent by Elizabeth Braddon

"Well, I've read The Woman in White." Will offers.

"Finished it during the meeting," Brooke holds her book up. "I'm reading Moonstone now."

Will brightens. "Oh, I loved that one, especially the part with the-"

"Spoil this book and I will smother you in your sleep."

Will laughs. "Fine," He responds, picking up one of the books. "What's Lady Audley's Secret about?"

Brooke grins. "Well, it's about..."  
\---------  
"Why'd you come up here, anyway?"

"The view's killer." Brooke answers, turning a page. "And I like heights."

"A lot of people are afraid of them."

"Some people are afraid of storms. I happen to love both. Did you ever get a chance to go to the Latting Observatory?"

Will blinks at the change in topic. "The what?"

"From the Exhibition in 1853?"

The Industry Exhibition. Now he remembered.

"The Observatory was higher than this. The spire's only 290 feet. The Observatory was 315. You could see everything around for miles and miles if it was clear out. I would show you if it was still around, but it burned back in '56."

Will nods. "I think I would have liked that."

Brooke smiles.

 **April 13, 1866**  
Will reaches across the bed lazily, and groans when he only meets cold sheets.

\---------  
Brooke is on the couch, legs curled underneath herself as she sketches something out. Roscoe is sprawled over the floor by the bottom of the couch.

Roscoe always gets up with Brooke, even if it was only to go back to sleep at her feet.

"Bad night?"

There are bad nights and good nights. Good nights are when Brooke goes to sleep at a relatively normal hour, doesn't toss and turn, and doesn't wake up at an absurdly early time.

Bad nights are the nights where she can't sleep. When even if she can, she tosses and turns all night, and ends up getting up before the sun.

Brooke hums in agreement and he finally sees what she's sketching- Nicky and Adrien, both laughing.

He taps the edge of the sketch. "Is there a story?"

"Just a good memory." She glances over at him. "You can go back to sleep if you want."

She goes back to sketching and Will watches her for a moment before laying his head down in her lap.

"What are you doing?"

"Going back to sleep."

 **November 14, 1866**  
William absentmindedly stroked Brooke's hair, stopping when her hand twitched. It had taken forever for her to fall asleep, she couldn't wake up yet.

Brooke stirred, briefly, then she curled closer to Will, tucking her head against his chest.

Will tries not to move for the rest of the night.

 **April 3, 1867**  
Will presses kisses to her throat, lips burning like matches against her skin, and Brooke gasps, arches her throat.

She tugs on a lock of his hair, pulls his mouth to hers, and when he closes his eyes, his eyelashes flutter against her cheekbones.

Will pulls away and stops for a moment to look at her. His hair was an absolute mess, but god was that ever a million-dollar smile.

 _I love him,_ Brooke realizes.

 **April 11, 1867**  
Will leaves to go back to his own state, and Brooke channels all of her nervous energy into repainting her house with murals.

Brooke doesn't have good experiences with love of the romantic sort. Philip and Luce had died, and loving Austin was complicated.

She paints lilacs and roses growing along her cabinets and then stars along the doorways.

Brooke thinks about her brother, about how he quietly loved Adam from a distance, both of them too afraid to ruin what they had to act. She thinks about Scott and Ginny, Scott oblivious and Ginny never just coming out and saying it.

Brooke doesn't want that. She doesn't want to spend decades in this undefined relationship, too scared to admit how she feels out loud.

 **May 11, 1867**  
They're walking around the capital during the lunch break, and Will's talking about some fight he got into with Cordelia, and Brooke just blurts it out.

\---------

"I love you."

Will freezes in the middle of his sentence, something about the meeting- some fight he got into with Cordelia. He turns to look at Brooke.

She didn't look like she had meant to say it. She stands a little straighter and squares her shoulders before speaking again. "I love you, and I didn't want to, but at some point, you smiled and  _god_ , I love you."

It's silent. Will has to say _something_ ,  _anything_ , but he just  _can't_.

There's awkward silence for a few more moments. "I think the break is over." Brooke announces quietly.

She turns and walks away.

 **May 13, 1867**  
"What are you doing?"

Will startles at this, and Del almost winces. His hands were covered in ink, and his hair was streaked through with it. There are bags under his bloodshot eyes.

His desk was covered in paper, dozens of pieces. Some crumpled, some not.

"I need envelopes." He mutters.

 **May 13, 1867**  
Nicky is the one who brings her the letter, his jaw tensed.

She can't bring herself to care that she's worrying him right now, that she's reminding him of all the times he's had to pick up the pieces.

\-------------

_Dear Brooke,_

_I've spent the past three weeks trying to find the right words. However, no combination of twenty-six different letters could describe how I feel about you, and how sorry I am for not telling you the other day._

_I'm going to try to anyway._

_I won't say that I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you. I don't believe in love at first sight, and I think that when Alfred brought you home, I hated you._

_Or, more accurately, I hated what you represented. You were better than me- smarter, bolder, brighter, and I guess I was jealous._

_But anyways, there are a million moments I was probably falling in love with you. When you kissed me on New Years, when you held me back the day Daniel left._

_Or maybe it was after Antietam, when you sat in the closet and cried on my shoulder. I've been claustrophobic since 1813, and yet I sat in that closet for hours, and it was because you needed to be comforted. Maybe it was when you lit candles after my nightmare and read Dickens to me. Maybe it was when you went after Jackson because I couldn't. Maybe it was when you started translating Monte Christo. Maybe it was when you kept me from falling apart after Jackson hurt Del._

_Maybe there isn't a distinguishing moment when I fell in love with you. Maybe I've been falling for such a long time I forgot when it started._

_I still have nightmares about your first death. You died for me for no reason other than you thought that Alfred would miss me, and I remember wondering why you ever thought Alfred would miss me more than you._

_I know that you love storms and heights because they make things quieter. That you love the smell of a new book and fresh paint and coffee. I know that you drink your coffee when it's still scalding and always burn your mouth because if you don't you'll forget about it, and you don't like drinking cold coffee when it's supposed to be hot. I know you don't have a favorite painting, or a favorite book or song, because you can't decide. I know that you tap your feet and fingers constantly, but you only tap your fingers on your thigh when you're thinking. I know you speak more languages than most people can name. I know that when you smile, your eyes crinkle around the corners._

_I know that sometimes you can't sleep, and I can't fix that, no matter how hard I try, but I also know that you don't say anything when I lay my head in your lap or against your chest because I can't sleep without you sometimes._

_I love you so much, for so many reasons, Brooke._

_And I'm sorry, sorry I didn't tell you this when you said it. Sorry that I can't just say things like this with no hesitation, that when I try my tongue trips over the words._

_I'm unsure about a lot of things in life, but I know that I love you._

_Love, William_

**July 17, 1867**  
The day before the meeting, Brooke stares at her sketchbooks lined up in chronological order on her bookshelf.

There are sketchbooks full of the Hamiltons and the Schuylers, full of Alexander and Philip and Angelica, full of Eliza and Peggy and Catherine- she had always been close to the Schuylers, even more so when Alexander had married Eliza- there had been generations who were practically born knowing who she was. There is one full of Luce and her children.

Brooke doesn't pick those up. She doesn't pick up the one from the civil war, full of Alfred's tired eyes and siblings in grey or navy.

Instead, she picks up the ones from the last three years.

She should have realized it sooner, that Will had become a prominent feature in her sketchbook.

 **July 18, 1867**  
Will taps his foot as the clock ticks down. He isn't even paying attention to what Kendall is saying.

His gaze drifts again to Brooke.

Will catches her eyes, and she smiles at him.   
\----------  
They don't have to talk much. Will blurts _I love you_  out as soon as she comes over, backed with the love letters he'd written her like so Jane Austen love interest.

Brooke smiles and passes over her sketchbook.

She never lets anyone have her sketchbook. Nicky and Adrien can get away with looking over her shoulder or looking at it if she leaves it open, but she'd slapped Scott that time he made a playful grab for it.

Will takes it hesitantly, glancing at Brooke in confusion.

Roscoe dominates the first page, quick lines drawn to show a subject in motion, a study of his face, one ear flopping down and the other sticking up.

Will keeps flipping through it. There's Nicky and his messy hair done in charcoal. Adrien, hockey stick in hand. One of Sam frowning at tarot cards. 

And then he pauses.

It's weird to see himself in drawn in careful lines of colored pencils- his unruly blonde hair and the faint, barely-there scar that runs through his left eyebrow and the freckle on the back of his hand.

 _Oh_.

He'd written her love letters, and Brooke had drawn him.

He sets the sketchbook down beside him carefully, knowing how much it means to her, and then surges forward to kiss her.

Will's hands tangle into her hair as he kisses her. "I love you."

Brooke breaks the kiss to say it back. "I love you."

Will laughs, covering her face with kisses before going back to kiss her on the mouth.

It's not a very nice kiss- they're both smiling too much for it to be a good kiss, but at the same time, it's a great kiss.

They end up being late for the meeting, and Del rolls her eyes when she sees their intertwined hands and Nicky says something in Dutch that makes Brooke kick him under the table.

 **July** **30,** **1867**  
Brooke thinks this might be pure happiness- Bailey and Roscoe sprawled over the foot of the bed, Will beside her, a lazy morning.

Will hums in agreement when she says so, and Brooke smiles and presses closer to him.

(Of course, it's all ruined when Bailey sneezes and startles Roscoe into falling off the bed, but hey, it was peaceful for a while.)  


****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I've been crazy busy with summer schoolwork and volunteer stuff.
> 
>  
> 
> **Brooke's Books:**
> 
>  
> 
> • _Histoire d'un casse-noisette (The Nutcracker) by Alexandre Dumas_  
>  _•Le Meneur de loups (The Wolf Leader) by Alexandre Dumas_  
>  _•Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas_  
>  _•A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens_  
>  _•The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne_    
>  _•The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins_  
>  _•Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon_  
>  _•Trail of the Serpent by Elizabeth Braddon_  
>  • _Moonstone by Wilkie Collins_


End file.
